Economic and Social Justice

2016 Manistee County Election Resultsby Rick Schrock

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had one of the lowest performances ever seen in Manistee County for a Presidential campaign. She received only 39% of the vote here. Compare that to 57% for Obama in 2008 and 52% for Obama in 2012.

The presidential primary in March was an indicator of things to come. Trump stormed Manistee County with a 15% lead over his closest competitor in the Republican primary. Clinton was soundly defeated when she took only 40% of the vote in Manistee county while Bernie Sanders took 58% of the vote. Little changed for Clinton between the primary and the general election.

“Down ballot” Democratic candidates were overwhelmingly rejected by voters in Manistee County and across the country. As a result we will have single party rule in Michigan and in Washington DC. This is very bad news for the redistricting following the 2020 census.

A preliminary look at voting statistics seems to indicate we had three distinct groups of voters in 2016. We saw a new pattern of voters and that changed everything.

Every election both parties see their “base voters” show up. These are people with definite party preferences and consistently vote for members of their party. The numbers we see show those people showing up this year pretty much the way we expected. It appears that almost all of Clinton's support came from this group.

The second group of voters we saw were new faces. They were the “Trump surge”. These seem to include a lot of people who had given up on voting in the past, but were motivated to come out because of Donald Trump. It appears they voted for change and that meant voting against Democrats up and down the ticket. This created a huge tidal wave of Republican votes. This group was largely overlooked in polling predictions before the election.

The third group of voters are our old friends. These are Independents and ticket splitters who usually only vote in presidential years. Democrats normally love these people because they tend to reject the more extreme ideas of Republicans these days and lean towards more moderate Democrats. This is where Democrats typically pick up a lot of votes. These Independents create our margin of victory every four years. This year they surprised us. In overwhelming numbers they rejected Clinton and then split their tickets in various ways for other Democrats. As a party we failed to fully appreciate just how significant their anti-Clinton feelings were.

Ticket splitters rejected Clinton and then 9% of them turned around and voted for Dan Scripps. Ticket splitters rejected Clinton and then 11% voted for Meg Batzer. Meg had enough base voters in her Democratic leaning district to add to the ticket splitters to win easily. With such a low county wide base vote for Clinton the 9% ticket splitters voting for Scripps were not enough to counter the Trump surge. Almost every Republican on the ballot won due to the Trump surge.

Almost no Democrats can survive when our presidential candidate performs 16% below the Republican candidate in Manistee County. There are simply not enough Independent ticket splitters. All the voter analysis I see points to the presidential race determining the fate of the rest of the Democratic candidates.​There is good news. Democrats will still hold 3 of the 7 seats on the County Commission. Democrats also will hold the County Treasurer and the County Register of Deeds offices. Our continued power sharing at the county level is an indication of the fairly even split between Democrats and Republicans in Manistee County during normal elections. ​

Next Regular Meeting

County ConventionNovember 19, 2016HeadquartersMeeting 10 AM Headquarters Close Down

Words from the County Chair

Maintaining Hope

Many Manistee Democrats gathered at our headquarters on election night. After working for many months on our local, state and national campaigns, we were optimistic and ready to celebrate our success. Some of our local candidates won their hard earned victories. We congratulate them and pledge our continued support and gratitude for their significant contributions.

Unfortunately the night did not go as expected for many Democratic Candidates. Trump carried many Republicans on his coat tails resulting in stunning losses for Lon Johnson, Dan Scripps and many of our local candidates. We continue to believe they are best qualified but they were unable to overcome the massive negative sentiments unleashed in the Presidential race.

So where do we go from here? How do we deal with the grief caused by this tragic loss? We are still in various stages of the grief process. At first, we tended to deny what was happening. We anxiously awaited results from the next precinct or the next State to show that all would be well. It did not take long for denial to subside and for us to realize that the results were real and irreversible.

Many of us are still justifiably angry. The results are catastrophic. But anger alone is unhealthy and unproductive. We have to move on.

Generally the next stage of grief is bargaining. Can we keep our Supreme Court Justices on the bench until a Democratic President can be elected? Can Democratic members of the House and Senate hold the line on the most draconian proposals of the new administration? Bargaining may help but we realize the losses are real and power truly has shifted.

This leaves many of us in the fourth stage of grief; depression. For me, this is characterized by not wanting to get up in the morning, lack of energy and a feeling of hopelessness. After all this work, what difference does it make? Is all hope lost?

Thankfully, depression can and will be replaced by acceptance. By acceptance, I do not mean giving up. As a Social Worker, I am taught to never accept an unacceptable injustice. But we can accept the reality of our situation and know that we have new challenges to overcome. We can accept that new opportunities must be found to make the world better for everyone. ​ There are many paths to success. Now, one of our paths is blocked. Rather than banging our head against the obstacle, we can step back and find a new path. We can keep up the fight, try new strategies and find new opportunities. In the end, good will prevail but only if we do not give up.